


Chronology

by rivkat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Eight crazy nights, Gen, Gospels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-25
Updated: 2009-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-05 06:34:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivkat/pseuds/rivkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For lapillus, prompt: Winchester gospels, midrash.  Not quite midrash, but I hope I got the spirit of the thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chronology

_In the first book in the series, Dean says that he hasn’t spoken to Sam in “nearly two years,” and in #3 Dead in the Water, Dean tells Sam that he spent “every day for two years with Dad, while you were going to pep rallies.” In #7 Hookman, however, Dean says, “So this is how you spent four good years of your life, huh?” while they do research in a library. Yet in #1 Supernatural, Sam has a law school interview; had four years passed, he would have already graduated. Instead, he appears to be two months into his fourth year; assuming he left his family shortly after high school graduation, that produces a period of something under three and a half years. Consistent with this calculation, the Apocrypha of Bobby Singer states that, after 2002, Sam was absent and that neither John nor Dean would tolerate a word spoken about him._

The chronology of the Gospel presents many difficulties. Some have argued that the apparent contradiction in the duration of Sam Winchester’s absence from his family can be resolved if we posit an incomplete estrangement for the first two years of his college education, followed by some final, or at least thought-to-be-final, break after which all contact between Dean and Sam ceased. (It is generally presumed that there was no further contact between Sam and his father upon Sam’s matriculation, though strictly speaking the text does not exclude the possibility of some temporary reconciliation. Indeed, R. Green takes precisely this position, arguing that John Winchester, with the great love he bore his sons, must have continued to engage with Sam, despite his initial violent rejection of Sam’s desire to worship at the altar of secular knowledge rather than remaining immersed in the true mysteries, cf. Exodus 20:5. R. Green contends that John sent Sam numerous packages, without accompanying notes; in this way, he recapitulated the gifts of G-d, whose involvement remains direct even though His ways often resist intepretation. It should be noted, however, that this is a minority position.)

One school maintains that the confusion in dates is deliberate. There are numerous portions of the Gospel in which hunts seem to be compressed past human capability, or extended beyond reason. On several occasions, Dean and/or Sam are gravely injured, yet mere days later they are said to be capable of fighting for their lives. If the old maps are to be believed, the Impala delivers them from place to place across a vast continent at speeds that must on occasion have approached a fighter plane’s. Just as tradition tells us that the oil for the Temple lasted eight days when it should have lasted only one, the Winchesters’ capabilities exceed those of the merely human, demonstrating that they are favored by G-d. (But see R. Tsoulakas, arguing that in fact the Winchesters were most hated by G-d, and that the better model for the New Gospel is Job, not Jesus and Judas.)

Others read the references to time as clues for numerological purposes. Two years, two brothers, two great angels battling at the end of days: thus is the end prefigured in the beginning. (Bet, the letter corresponding to two, is the first letter of the written Torah.)

Four years, four months in Hell; four questions and four sons for Pesach, perhaps representing the multiple roles played by Sam and Dean as they move from ignorance to wisdom, weakness to strength, defiance to obedience—and back again. (Note that Dean confronts three doubles during his journey—the shapeshifter, #6 Skin; the dream double, #54 Dream a Little Dream of Me; and #86 The End. Some would also include Dean’s out-of-body experience in #23 In My Time of Dying, because of his attempts to interact with his comatose body, but these three doubles are sentient and interact with Dean, each revealing something about Dean’s character, and thus it is generally considered that they are appropriately grouped together with Dean himself, making a total of four.)

Four is also, of course, twice two, and R. Gremsch has suggested that Dean later doubles his account of the amount of time he spent apart from Sam because the pain of separation made Dean’s perception of time stretch out. (Cf. #70 Heaven and Hell, in which Dean reveals that each of the four months that passed on earth while he was in Hell equated to ten years for him.) R. Jain, by contrast, argues that Dean’s doubling prefigures the doubling that will occur with Lucifer and Michael: two becomes four, but is in the end reduced to two again.

There are those, of course, who claim that the discrepancies are present in the Gospels precisely to provoke these sorts of debates, as G-d delights in the creativity of His own creations. In this we are following in the footsteps of the Divine. (Cf. #83 Sympathy for the Devil; #91 The Real Ghostbusters.)


End file.
